


Exploring a Crash

by Shane_for_Wax



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M, One day i will figure out how they manage to have so many shuttles they can toss away, Other, some minor hints at them being a couple at some point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:53:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21744811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shane_for_Wax/pseuds/Shane_for_Wax
Summary: While on an expedition to explore what seemed to be the remnants of buildings but no actual intelligent lifeforms, Chakotay and B'Elanna find themselves crash-landed on the planet and far off course of the buildings they were planning to explore. The usual from bad to worse.
Relationships: Chakotay/B'Elanna Torres
Kudos: 3
Collections: Star Trek Secret Santa 2019





	Exploring a Crash

“I don’t know what you’re so worried about, Chakotay,” B'Elanna said, and he could tell by the pronunciation of his name that she was worried, too. Her voice always lilted on the first and last syllables when she was feeling particularly stressed or annoyed. He had known her longer than her own deadbeat, prejudiced father, and he had always been good at picking up changes in speech. It helped, given his rank and position.

“Who said anything about worried? _Voyager_ is still in the system and they aren’t about to fly off without their First Officer or Chief of Engineering.” Although, that was not quite true. He flashed briefly back to when he and Janeway had been ‘left behind’, though that had been on explicit orders.

B'Elanna gave him one of her patented unimpressed looks before brushing curly hair back behind her ears. Dark eyes studied their surroundings, with the banged up shuttle as the centerpiece. She had already given up on trying to fix the shuttle’s busted engine, instead choosing to cannibalize it for comms and shelter purposes. The front window and view screen had practically exploded upon impact and it was a miracle both ex-Maquis had gotten out with just some bruises and minor lacerations to the face, arms, and hands. Made for a nice cross breeze, though.

She would say that transporting was a safer bet, but honestly she knew the odds were always 50/50 no matter which way they explored a new planet. It was one of the inevitable truths about boldly going where no one had gone before: shit happened. At least she could be secure in the knowledge that it was never shoddy engineering work that caused it.

“At least we can use the husk of the shuttle for shelter. Only problem will be staying warm,” B'Elanna admitted and a shiver chose to wrack her spine to emphasize the problem. She had not dressed for any kind of inclement weather or massive changes in temperature. Neither had Chakotay, though.

Chakotay gave a low kind of grunt in agreement before stepping down from the rock he had been standing on to try to get a lay of the land.

“Whenever this happens I always imagine my ancestors laughing at me,” Chakotay muttered, low enough that B'Elanna wasn’t certain he had meant her to hear. So she did the ‘polite’ thing and chose not to say anything, instead busying herself with pulling out the emergency blankets and ration packs. Maybe a couple years ago she would have teased Chakotay a bit more. But now they couldn’t afford any discord. She supposed she had Janeway to thank for her maturity. 

When she looked up she could pick out the spot in the sky where the _USS Voyager_ waited in orbit, waited for a proper solution to the issue that didn’t include just blindly flinging down another shuttle or trying to transport them through a hostile atmosphere.

When she looked back over, Chakotay was fidgeting, trying to decide on the next thing to do in the checklist crafted by Starfleet (with some Maquis… improvements) for just these occasions.

B'Elanna watched him as he paced, but eventually grew tired of seeing him wear a hole in the ground. Instead she took one of the emergency blankets and draped it haphazardly across the hole in the front of the shuttle. With a bit of tinkering with her phaser, she got it to adhere to the metal enough that it wouldn’t flap in a breeze. Pleased at making progress, she made sure to grab another of the blankets out of the four total that were usually stored in a shuttle.

“Hey, Chakotay, how is the whole all natural heat and light source thing coming?” B'Elanna called out as she stopped and bent to tuck the blankets against the wall of the shuttle with the least damage. She knew him, knew he would have been scouting and probably nearby again. However…

“I found a water source with a good amount of trees for the fire,” Chakotay reported over her shoulder, making her jump in surprise and swing at his face on pure instinct. Luckily, he had had time to get used to Klingon reflexes and caught her wrist before her fist made contact with his face.

“Chakotay! Don’t do that; I hate it when you do that!” B'Elanna huffed before yanking her wrist free. Chakotay merely smiled at her. At least he was still good at sneaking up on people. One point for Chakotay, grandfather.

“C'mon, the wood is heavier than I expected and without any of the carts on _Voyager_ or even a rudimentary wheelbarrow it will take some time to get enough for a fire before the sun in this system goes down,” Chakotay explained, already setting off without her. The engineer glanced at their mediocre camp before hurrying after him and hoping there weren’t any indigenous beings around that would rob them blind at a moment’s notice.

Torres stared at the stream that Chakotay had led them to. After a quick check it was actually perfectly fine H2O, she quickly filled their canteens while Chakotay went to work felling one of the nearby trees. The sound it made when it landed on the ground was like thunder and shook the ground under their feet. B'Elanna shared a look with Chakotay.

“Heavier than expected, huh?” She asked dryly before getting to work at cutting the trunk into manageable slices and cords. Chakotay couldn’t help but laugh.

“Think of it this way, good training for your next PT exam,” he said, earning another unimpressed look.

To their advantage, night time wasn’t something that arrived quickly on the rock they had been stranded on. Unfortunately, the planet itself was not planning on doing them any favors. They had only been able to make two trips given the weight of the load when they heard what could only be described as a rattling howl. Chakotay narrowly dodged the latest load from landing on his foot as Torres dropped her end to remove her phaser.

“B'Elanna, it has to be over a kilometer away,” Chakotay said, exasperated over how jumpy she was.

“Remind me again how far a kilometer is?” Torres retorted in a low raspy voice, aiming her phaser at something over Chakotay’s shoulder. Chakotay opened his mouth to reply but was drowned out by another rattling roar that was definitely a lot closer than he had expected. He half turned before leaping off to his left just as Torres fired just a bit further to her left than where his right ear had been a moment earlier. Another rattling howl that was punctuated by a shriek of anger or maybe pain, Chakotay couldn’t tell and didn’t quite care at the moment.

B'Elanna fired again but the shot went slightly wide. The hulking creature that looked like it was half made of the trees surrounding them let out an even louder roar before bounding after Chakotay, completely ignoring the woman firing at its haunches.

Just once, Chakotay would like to not be considered the more tantalizing target.

“Chakotay, hang a left!” B'Elanna called out as she continued to fire. More roars were the response as well as the snapping of jaws that almost sounded metallic. Oh, what she wouldn’t give for a phaser rifle right about then. Chakotay to his credit followed instructions and dropped down to slide under a partially felled tree. The creature, however, practically walked right through the trunk undeterred.

Desperate, Chakotay fired a couple times behind himself blindly. An acrid smell hit his nose before a shriek of what definitely had to be anger that time. He clambered up a slight hill that quickly turned into a cliff, nearly losing his footing three times along the way. But the creature didn’t miss a single step.

“Chakotay! You’re headed to a drop that has to be at least 100 feet high!” B'Elanna bellowed over the sound of the creature and her phaser. She did her best to keep herself from thinking about how impervious this creature was to phaser blasts and thus how useful it could be as armor. There would be time later, if she and Chakotay both survived the experience.

“I know!” Chakotay was now, in quite a cliche fashion, trapped on the very edge of the cliff with the creature grumbling forward every second.

As the creature swiped at him, Chakotay flashed back to his Starfleet training days, modified with boxing lessons. Then to the close quarters combat lessons for the Maquis. 'Use your opponent’s momentum against them’ was a tried and true method. Just not normally against creatures of this size. Looking at B'Elanna for what could easily be the last time, Chakotay ducked off to the side. The creature roared in confused rage as it quickly tumbled over the cliff. But its arm was still sweeping and managed to snag Chakotay by his uniform jacket. With a yell more out of surprise than anything, Chakotay joined the creature in tumbling off the cliff.

“Chakotay!” B'Elanna yelled, rushing forward to the edge without being in danger of falling after him. It took a short few seconds for her to hear the heavy thud of the creature landing, and possibly Chakotay too.

“Chakotay!” she yelled again, for all the good it could possibly do if Chakotay was injured or worse. She listened for a reply but heard nothing but the soft patter of debris falling into the relatively shallow water below.

Doing her best not to think the worst, she took the much safer route down the cliff and around to the water. She half expected Chakotay to be standing there with a stupid grin on his face and teasing her for being worried about him. All she could see though was the creature.

With phaser still firmly in hand, she edged closer to the creature.

“Chakotay?” she called out again, slightly softer this time. She heard a groan and jumped back, quickly aiming at the animal-plant hybrid thing. But as she watched it, there was no movement at all.

“Chakotay?” Louder this time as she skirted around the creature. Almost as if he had nestled himself there, Chakotay was in the crook of the thing’s arm–or leg, whichever it was. And again, for a second she was sure that Chakotay would pop up with a stupid teasing smile he seemed to reserve just for her until she noticed that half of him from the waist down was nowhere close to being in proper alignment.

“…Chakotay,” she mumbled, suddenly wishing she had the EMH with her. She knew battlefield first aid, but she also knew he outweighed her by a few dozen pounds.

Undeterred, she tucked her phaser away and used all the strength adrenaline and Klingon DNA gave her to drag Chakotay away from the creature and out of the water.

As she was getting to be halfway back to camp, Chakotay’s comm chirped and nearly startled B'Elanna bad enough to drop him, but managed to hold on.

“ _Voyager_ to Commander Chakotay. Chakotay do you copy?” Harry Kim’s voice filtered through, sounding a tad tinny from the damage the badge had sustained.

With a growl of frustration, Torres tapped her own combadge.

“Torres to _Voyager_. Commander Chakotay is unconscious right now,” B'Elanna explained, groaning halfway through the report as she returned to dragging Chakotay back as delicately as possible to prevent making his injury worse.

“B'Elanna? What happened?” Harry asked, voice instantly changing to one of extreme concern. Good old Harry Kim, worrying enough for the entire ship.

Another groan of strain before hitting the badge again.

“Well, Starfleet, Chakotay bet me he could make it to the bottom of a cliff faster than one of the native fauna. He lost. I won. Lucky me. I’m a few minutes out from our shuttle. His leg is looking really bad, like EMH needed bad. Any chance you figured out how we got swatted out of the sky and how to get us back?”

B'Elanna ignored the sharp intake of breath from Harry, having her own breathing to worry about as her strength from adrenaline began to flag.

“We think it was an almost invisible plasma storm. As you were going down we got some weird readings from the computer on the shuttle. We were actually hoping you could transfer it up to us…”

B'Elanna didn’t answer right away as she finally got to the camp and found a nice flat spot to put Chakotay close to the shuttle.

“Can it wait until I get Chakotay stabilized a bit more? Plus I have to find the data… the computer took a hit when we landed and what wasn’t fried went to comms.”

“Oh, yeah. O-of course. Captain says check in in 15 minute intervals,” Harry said, sounding even more exceedingly stressed and worried somehow.

“Is this working? Lieutenant Torres, this is sickbay. Do you copy?” The EMH’s voice suddenly broke in.

“Doctor, we talked about this–” Harry started.

“Yes, we did. As you are well aware all injuries must be reported to sickbay– that is, to me– immediately and communication with the away team becomes prioritized for the medical bay and–”

“Got it!” B'elanna cut in before Harry could reply. “Doctor, how do I stabilize Chakotay’s leg from the hip down?”

Harry wisely chose to fall silent for the time being.

“If it is from the hip down you will need to splint it for the time being from waist down to ankle. You will need a board or I suppose a thick stick would work but of course the preferred–”

“Splint! Got it, doctor! Thank you! Give me a bit!”

“I really wish people would let me finish a sentence some time…” the EMH complained before going silent.

B'Elanna stared at Chakotay a moment but was too afraid to ask if clothes could stay on or not. She assumed it would work better without the clothes in the way, not to mention checking for open wounds she may have missed thanks to the uniform color scheme, so as quietly as possible and as carefully, she slipped the man’s uniform off, wishing it wasn’t a jumpsuit. It was the first time she’d seen him without pants in quite a while but she didn’t think much about it. She then grabbed one of the sticks that Chakotay had grabbed when they were bringing in the firewood and had made some comment about turning it into a spear or some such thing so they wouldn’t waste the battery packs on their phasers. All business, she lashed the branch to Chakotay’s leg. She was glad to note lack of blood, but there were some nasty bruises forming. The man moaned a little in his unconscious state but made no response otherwise. It worried her more than she wanted to admit.

’ _I swear if he makes me get out the medicine wheel again_ …’ she thought as she finished tying the last knot. She used one of the other survival blankets to cover Chakotay up.

“Torres to sickbay. Splint is in place. Now what? Chakotay is still unconscious, I thought he would wake up when the splint was getting put in place…”

“His brain may be trying to protect him from the pain. Nothing to worry about right now. In the mean time, find the first aid kit again and set him up with fluids while he is unconscious. Just because he isn’t bleeding doesn’t mean he doesn’t need to replenish his blood cells and hydration is always important anyways.”

She was starting to regret not paying much attention in battlefield first aid at the academy as she fumbled with setting up the fluids. Her pride kept her from asking for a step by step. When they started to infuse nicely, she figured she did it right.

“Please keep an eye on any swelling in the leg or even along the head. You said he fell. Just because you didn’t see his head hit the ground doesn’t mean it didn’t get traumatized from landing. And–”

“Sorry, doc, gotta interrupt you this one time. Captain says she and Seven found a way to neutralize the plasma storms to send a new shuttle down to you. But it will take another twelve standard hours to set everything up.”

So many things could happen in twelve hours. She grimaced.

“Is that the best they can do?” B'Elanna heard herself asking a tad too sharply.

Harry paused a moment, which just made B'Elanna feel like a jerk. But she was too worried to apologize just then.

“Yes, lieutenant. I’m sure it would go even faster if you were here…” Harry tried to smooth things over.

“Well I’m not, am I? Just keep me updated. Torres out.”

B'Elanna felt even more like a jerk and knew there would be some making up to do later.

With nothing really left to do except actually start a fire, B'Elanna focused on that instead of just watching Chakotay sleep. It took her enough tries she was glad Chakotay was unconscious.

B'Elanna was beginning to doze a little when Chakotay jerked awake with a surprised yell. B'Elanna couldn’t help her own small yell of surprise before rushing over to Chakotay.

“B'Elanna? What happened? I remember that tree dinosaur thing then nothing…” Chakotay brushed his hand along his throbbing thigh then flinched. Carefully he pulled the emergency blanket off, as if afraid of what he might find (or not find). He was relieved that he still had both legs (and other parts). His gaze fell on the splint, expertly tied if not placed. And he noticed his relative lack of clothing.

“Did you–”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before, Chakotay. Relax. You and I both know Maquis conditions meant a lot of getting to know each other more than expected. I’m just surprised you switched to solid colors,” she knew she would have failed not to smile so didn’t even try to prevent it. The look on her face made Chakotay roll his eyes and groan. He supposed he should be grateful, joking meant things weren’t as dire as he thought. B'Elanna didn’t tend to have gallows humor (about other people, anyways) or exaggerate.

“Anyways. The… tree dinosaur,” she supposed that was as good a description as any, ”grabbed you and yanked you off the cliff as it plummeted. Have to admire the philosophy of ‘if I’m going down you’re going with me’ also applying here in the Delta Quadrant. Kinda poetic. While I dragged you back, Harry got in touch. They’re rigging up another shuttle, this one is supposed to be able to neutralize the storm that knocked us out of the sky. Unfortunately it won’t be ready until tomorrow.”

Chakotay took in the 'sitrep’ then nodded thoughtfully.

“Ration bar?” Torres offered, holding out a brown bar that seemed to be made of granola and molasses. Chakotay made a face but took it anyways with a thanks, it was all they knew to be edible on the planet so far. After eating he pulled the blanket closer.

“I’m sorry the archaeologist in me got us stuck down here,” Chakotay suddenly said. It was rare for him to take the blame like that. He was rarely self deprecating.

“Says the man with a leg that was basically turned into a number five,” B'Elanna noted as she added a bit more wood to the fire.

“Who had to get here back to camp somehow and wouldn’t have needed the help if we had never come.”

B'Elanna knew that a younger version of herself would have probably chewed his head off about their predicament. And he almost seemed like he was expecting it. But, she was an adult…

“You’re right but I think you have been punished enough for your curiosity, Cha-cat-ay.”

B'Elanna realized a second later than Chakotay what she had said.

“Harry,” they said together with a shared eyeroll. The junior bridge officer did tend to enjoy his wordplay sometimes. It was enough to break Chakotay out of his mood, however.

Now that she knew Chakotay wasn’t comatose, B'Elanna got up and cut up some more of the wood for the fire as well as setting up some minor defenses. She wasn’t certain how long night would reign before they would get picked up in a new shuttle so they had to be prepared.

“I will take the next watch. You deserve some rest,” Chakotay said.

“Torres to sickbay,” B'Elanna said instead, tapping her badge.

“Please state the nature of the medical emergency.”

“The opposite actually. Commander Chakotay has regained consciousness.”

“Wonderful, I shall log that immediately. Don’t worry, Commander, once you are back on the ship we will fix your leg good as new again!” B'Elanna was pretty sure The Doctor was being sarcastic but at the moment didn’t care.

“See you then,” Chakotay called out.

“Torres to Kim,” B'Elanna ordered next.

“Kim here!”

“Chakotay has regained consciousness and I have fortified the area as best I can. I have also turned on the tracking beacon. Let the captain know we wait for a shuttle off this rock as soon as possible.”

“You got it. Glad you are back with us, Commander,” Harry said.

“Thank you, Ensign.”

The night felt far longer than the day had been, and neither slept perfectly especially when they heard what sounded like another “tree dinosaur” stomping its way towards their ramshackle base camp. Luckily it either seemed to change its mind or the planet really did defy certain laws about sounds. 

The day dawned and shortly after what constituted a breakfast while on an away mission, the pair waited as patiently as possible for the call down to make sure the landing zone was cleared out. The call came in about the time B’Elanna was about to decide they might as well have lunch too.

“Y’know, I’m actually tired enough and hungry enough I’m willing to eat whatever Neelix has managed to make,” B’Elanna muttered on the shuttle ride back to the ship, trying not to flinch every time it rocked like the one that had crashed had done.

Chakotay laughed hard enough he flinched and grabbed his leg. At least it was just a break.

 _I still want to know what that creature’s skin was made of…_ B’Elanna thought as the _Voyager_ came into view. But she was not at all willing to risk going back down to find out.

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first attempt at writing everyone in this fic, so I apologize for any ooc/inaccuracies.


End file.
